Goodness, He Has Chatty Facial Hair
by daydreambeliever099
Summary: Early morning in the Hogwarts dining hall, at the beginning of a slightly AU 7th year set after the Battle of Hogwarts. Hermione takes a walk down memory lane, and her thoughts keep returning to a certain best friend of hers.


_Disclaimer: I own nothing!_

_NB: This is slightly AU, written based on some of the things I always imagined would happen to the Harry Potter characters. In this story, the war is over and Harry defeated Voldemort as Rowling wrote, and the Golden Trio (along with most of their classmates) returned to Hogwarts for the seventh year they never had. Ron and Hermione, after the years of romantic tension covered in the books, dated briefly over the summer but quickly decided they were better off as friends after enduring multiple vicious fights during practically every date. Harry and Ginny never dated; they are close friends, but he is a big-brother figure to her._

The Hogwarts dining hall is shockingly empty this morning. I am really quite dismayed; don't my classmates know that the seventh-year assembly begins in only four hours? This is our first official event as a class of seventh-years, and it has been run every single year since 1483; Snape even made an attempt (surely atrocious, not-historically-accurate) last year. Really. At least I managed to drag Harry here with me. He insinuated that he only joined me so early because the volume at which I got ready this morning made it impossible for him to maintain the blissful slumber he had been enjoying, but I'm sure he's exaggerating. After years of mind-manipulating ESP with Voldemort, not to mention Ron's and Neville's snores back in Gryffindor, I find it hard to believe that one measly girl blow-drying her hair on the opposite end of a rather large Head's Suite would force those emerald eyes painfully and unwillingly open.

NOT that I blow-dried my hair for anyone's pleasure but my own, mind you. After all, this is my first day of classes, and it's going to be kicked off by the first of many traditional Hogwarts event which will mark a seventh year and a year of school which is finally, finally free from Voldemort. I have to look good for that. Whether or not Harry ever notices my new hairstyle or even recognizes the loathsome "whirring noise" as a blow-dryer.

Harry. He is sitting across the table from me now, idly thumbing through the sports section of the _Daily Prophet_. I don't even know why he still subscribes; I gave it up years ago when that awful lout Rita Skeeter started nabbing the majority of the headlines. He and I go through that same moment of mind-numbing, heart-stopping panic every day when he unfurls the paper to read the headlines: the oh-my-god-who-died-now-what-am-I-supposed-to-do-to-stop-it-BoyWhoLived-GoldenTrio-ChosenOneChosenOneChosenOne-Destiny-Prophecyprophecyprophecy inner monologue which hasn't quite left me and which, I'm sure, haunts him daily, playing in his brain in an endless loop. I hear his slight intake of breath and tense my shoulders as I watch him do the same, preparing for the worst, even though we know logically that the worst has already happened. Today's above-the-fold story, about an obese hippopotamus at the Maidstone Zoo and the growing problem of animal neglect in wizarding society, is likely to move Hagrid to tears. I was still selfishly glad to see it, as it promises that the world has set few plans in motion to disturb this very tenuous relaxation which is stealing over all of us—yes, even me, although—don't you worry—I've got a week-by-week schedule outlined for this year to keep me on top of my schoolwork and job searching.

"Mione," says Harry, and begins to read me a salacious tidbit about What's-His-Name Seeker from that Quidditch team the Weasleys like. I snap out of my reverie, glad that he has recalled me from it at the very moment when I ceased to savor the quiet September morning and began to think about my meticulous scheduling. I don't know when he dropped the "Her" from the front of my name, but I don't mind it at all, although I've viciously resisted every other nickname anyone has tried to give me. Perhaps I'm softening in my newfound old age. Harry's hair is characteristically rumpled, and his Head Boy's badge is lying face-down on the table in front of him. Two days into term, that Head Boy badge is fast becoming our biggest point of disagreement: he never wants to wear it and seems to conveniently "forget it" in our room multiple times a day. This morning, he audibly groaned when I reminded him to bring it with him, and claimed that it was 'uncomfortable.' For once, though, he himself does not look uncomfortable—he has lost the characteristic hunched-back-and-darty-eyes posture that he held tightly for all of last year, as if constantly preparing for an attack. He is too thin, as he has always been, all angles and bones, but after a grueling summer he is beginning to look, finally, healthier and less exhausted. The sunlight throws his high cheekbones into relief, and I am seized by a sudden urge to cuddle him, kiss him on the temple (never the forehead; Harry hates it when people pay any attention to his forehead, and hates it even more when people touch the scar) and tell him everything is going to be all right.

But he's no little boy, and I'm no little girl. He hasn't shaved in a few days, and some stubble that could theoretically grow into a beard is resting on his chin, taunting me: I am a grown-up, and I am attractive. You have to decide once and for all if you want to continue with this best friends business, or if you're interested. Odd sexual tension between best friends is a natural part of a fourteen-year-old's existence. God, I was in love with both Harry and Ron for all of third year. But it doesn't work like that anymore. It's all or nothing. Do you love me, or do you love me not? Do you want to try this, or do you want to play it safe, avoid the awkward gosh-the-weather's-nice relationship that you've developed with Ron after embarking upon a what-the-hell fling with him and discovering abruptly that there is no such thing as sexually-tense-best-friends now that we are eighteen. You are friends, or you are lovers. Period. MAKEUPYOURMIND, Mione.

God, he has chatty facial hair. And who gave that stubble the right to taunt me, anyway? For that matter, who gave that stubble the right to _grow_? It doesn't look right. Where is Mrs. Weasley when you need her? She needs to clean this marring mark of adulthood off of her (all-but-adopted) son's face just like she tried to clean Ron up before he got on the Hogwarts Express for the first time. That facial hair doesn't belong. Harry is the little boy, at least a head shorter than me with eyes as big as green apples, who seemed overwhelmed when I asked him what his name was on the Hogwarts Express; who spent most of our first year, though he laughingly denies it now, staring around him in near-silence, taking it all in; who was always capable of the most passionately intense loyalty I have ever seen (and likely, will ever see), a loyalty which burst out of him at surprising moments. Who hero-worshipped Fred and George; who painstakingly wrote Mrs. Weasley long thank-you notes for every gift (or postcard) she ever sent him; who never learned the meaning of "portion control" when it came to the raspberry tart in the dining hall and managed to give himself a stomachache at least once a month because of that; who taught me to fly in empty, locked classrooms during whatever snatches of time we could find between classes and never, ever told anyone, not even Ron, about how terrified I was of it and how I sobbed hysterically just like a twelve-year-old girl the first time he let go of my broomstick and forced me to ride a few meters alone.

Ginny flops down in the seat next to Harry. He ruffles her hair in greeting, and she shoots him a dirty look and says, "not before coffee." Coffee? Since when does she drink coffee? All right, all right, I know that Ginny has had a caffeine dependency for years, but indulge me in my fantasy for just one moment longer here and let me use the bright morning sunlight to pretend that we are all still little, that we haven't yet grown into the inevitability of things like caffeine and facial hair and painful, persistent glimmers that best-friendship isn't possible anymore when you're falling irrationally in love with someone. Ginny has always hero-worshipped Harry (although, to be fair, we all do, a little) and briefly convinced herself that she had a crush on him, a stage which embarrasses them both very deeply now that he is essentially another Weasley brother. I remember her crash-and-burn attempt at a love poem back from our second year and take a huge gulp of orange juice to hide my sudden smirk. Ginny didn't know what love or hormones were back then, and had confused her idolatry and admiration of Harry with the stirrings of a deep, passionate relationship which was destined to end in marriage. Tell me I'm not making the same mistake. He's my hero, to be certain, although he'd die of embarrassment and shame if I told him. Tell me I'm not being an eleven-year-old Ginny all over again.

The dining hall is much fuller now, finally. Neville ambles in, and Harry shoots him a grin and a high-five. I wonder if Harry has any idea that he's just made Neville's morning. From the moment a scrawny, first-year Harry burst forth, with a surprising gravitas lent by that formidable loyalty of his, that Neville was worth twelve of Malfoy, Neville adored him. Choosing Neville to ultimately kill Nagini in last April's battle cemented forever Neville's conviction that Harry was the world's greatest human and amazement that he had ended up with a friend like that. Hook, line, and sinker, we're yours, Mr. Potter. And with no intention on your part—you don't want to change what we think and you sure as hell don't think highly enough of yourself to convince anyone else through logic and intent. We just can't help it. We can't help falling in love with you.

So funny that I thought of that line about Malfoy. Neville repeated it to Draco's face at a Quidditch game a few months later, and somehow gleaned from it the courage to attempt to beat up Crabbe and Goyle. We still laugh about how lopsided that match-up was, but god that was pretty gutsy for a fat, forgetful, plodding first-year who none of us (though we denied it vociferously at the time and still would) never really saw as courageous enough to be a characteristic Gryffindor.

It's odd how frequently my thoughts stray back to first year now that we're here in this final (but hopefully anti-climactic) seventh year. It's odd how much time I spend ruminating upon how old we've all gotten. I never really seemed to notice in the first six years. Something about the horrible chaos of last year has drawn a thick charcoal line between years one-through-six and Year Seven. Ripped from the fabric of my daily life, ripped from the home in which I got to know all of these people, I suppose I can never be sewn back in exactly neatly. Don't get me wrong—it fits. I'm thrilled to get to do my seventh year the proper way, with no Voldemort. Yet somehow, we always knew there would be a before and an after, and this is the After. We aren't the same people. We aren't those first-years who dropped our Remembralls and found Fred and George the most brilliant people on earth and knew nothing, nothing at all, of coffee, shaving, and love. And yet it's funny how, just as I acknowledge its final passing, I start to reflect on it more and more, start to see in Harry and Ginny and Neville and—oh, _everybody_—glimmers of their first-year selves, their childhood takes on the world, who they really are waydeepdown. War has the capacity to warp and derange people, to change even that deepdeepdown, what-makes-you-tick relationship with the world. I grin across the table at Harry and give thanks that, no matter what we've suffered, it didn't do that to us.

A/N: Reviews very much appreciated! Story can be read as ending up as Harry/Hermione or not, depending on what Hermione does next.


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